This document discusses indicators for sustainable tourism. It explains that indicators are measures used to monitor key aspects of sustainability and support better management decisions. Good indicators can identify issues, impacts, and results of actions. The document outlines different types of indicators and discusses how they can be used at various levels from national to site-specific planning. Selecting indicators requires considering measurability, resources, stakeholder interests, and politics. The benefits of indicators include better decision-making, issue identification, performance evaluation, and accountability.

2.  Which ever approach is adopted, effective planning
and management decisions require knowledge that is
both relevant and adequate to the complexity of the
situation at hand.
 Tourism-related information has proliferated
dramatically during the past decade, but much of it is
useless or misleading.
 while giving the impression that an adequate and
relevant database is available, this plethora of
‘knowledge’ masks the fact that strategic information
on key aspects of sustainability is still seriously
lacking

3.  Variables that can be measured and monitored
to reveal the changing condition of a particular
phenomenon,
 are a means through which existing information
can be filtered and new information collected
 Indicators are measures of the existence or
severity of current issues, signals of upcoming
situations or problems, measures of risk and
potential need for action, and means to identify
and measure the results of our actions.

4.  According to the WTO (1996, p. 9), ‘indicators
measure information with which decision-makers
may reduce the chances of unknowingly taking
poor decisions’.
 While elegant in theory, however, an indicators
based sustainable tourism strategy is
complicated by the actual process of selecting,
measuring, monitoring and evaluating a viable
set of relevant variables.

5.  Given the complex nature of tourism systems,
there are in theory an infinite number of tourism-
related indicators to choose from.
 Factors that influence the actual selection of
working indicators in a particular destination or
business include policy relevance, the type of
approach to sustainability that is adopted (i.e.
weak or strong, Sustainable Tourism minimalist
or comprehensive), measurability, financial and
other resource constraints, stakeholder interests,
level of public support and politics

6.  These three types of indicator combine to
capture the internal and external dimensions of
a tourism system.
 An indicator set should incorporate variables
that describe the condition, viability and
potential influence of the system itself /
 Eg. number of tourists, annual growth, units of
accommodation, percentage of labour force
employed in tourism

7.  Indicators are information sets which are
formally selected to be used on a regular basis
to measure changes that are of importance for
tourism development and management.

8.  They can measure: a) changes in tourism’s own
structures and internal factors, b) changes in
external factors which affect tourism and c) the
impacts caused by tourism.
 Both quantitative and qualitative information can
be used for sustainability indicators.
 An indicator is normally chosen from a range of
possible data sets or information sources because it
is meaningful with regard to the key issues to
which tourism managers must respond.

9.  Use of that indicator can lead to actions to
anticipate and prevent undesirable (or
unsustainable) situations at destinations.
 In the context of sustainable development for
tourism, indicators are time series information
which is strategic to the sustainability of a
destination, its assets, and ultimately, the
fortunes of the tourism sector.

10.  Over the past decade, a great deal of work
has occurred on the clarification of the key
issues in sustainability for tourism and the
means by which indicators can support better
decisions and actions destination planning
and management, and an integral element in
efforts to promote sustainable development
for the tourism sector at all scales

11.  The stimulus for the tourism sector comes
from the perception that many destinations
have been at risk due to insufficient attention
to the impacts of tourism and to the long-term
sustainability of destinations.
 Incidences of contaminated beaches and
damaged cultural and ecological assets,
hostile reactions to tourists and to tourism
development, and resultant problems for the
tourism sector have occurred in many regions

12.  They serve as a key tool, providing specific
measures of changes in factors most important to
the sustainability of tourism in a destination.
 Some of the benefits from good indicators
include:
 Better decision-making - lowering risks or costs;
 Identification of emerging issues - allowing
prevention;
 Identification of impacts - allowing corrective
action when needed;

13. Performance measurement of the
implementation of plans and management
activities – evaluating progress in the
sustainable development of tourism;
Reduced risk of planning mistakes -
identifying limits and opportunities;

14.  Greater accountability - credible information
for the public and other stakeholders of
tourism fosters accountability for its wise use
in decision-making;
 Constant monitoring can lead to continuous
improvement - building solutions into
management.

15.  Indicators can support information-based
decision making in all levels of tourism planning
and management:
National level: to detect broad changes in
tourism at the national level, compare with other
nations, provide a baseline for the identification
of changes at more localized levels and support
broad level strategic planning;

16. Regional level- as input into regional plans and
protection processes, to serve as a basis for
comparison between regions and to provide
information for national level planning processes.
Specific destinations(e.g. coastal zones, local
municipalities and communities) to identify key
elements of assets, state of the tourism sector,
risks, and performance

17.  Key tourist use sites: within destinations (e.g.
protected areas, beaches, historic districts
within cities, areas of special interest) where
specific indicators may be key to decisions on
site control, management and future
development of tourist attractions (e.g., national
parks, theme parks) where management level
indicators can support site planning and
control; (see for example the section on tourist
sites in or adjacent to national parks.

18. Tourism companies:(e.g. tour operators, hotel-,
transport- and catering companies) who may
access indicators to feed their strategic planning
process for the destinations,
Individual tourism establishments: (e.g. hotels,
restaurants, marinas) to monitor the impact and
performance of their operation

19.  There are different types of indicators, each
with different utility to decision-makers. While
the most directly useful may be those that help
to predict problems, several other genres exist:
 Early warning indicators:(e.g., decline in
numbers of tourists who intend to return);
 Indicators of stresses on the system:(e.g., water
shortages, or crime indices);
 Measures of the current state of industry (e.g.,
occupancy rate, tourist satisfaction

20.  Measures of the impact of tourism development
on the biophysical and socio-economic
environments (e.g. indices of the level of
deforestation, changes of consumption patterns
and income levels in local communities);
 Measures of management effort
 (e.g., cleanup cost for coastal contamination);
 Measures of management effect , results or
performance (e.g., changed pollution levels,
greater number of returning tourists

21.  While all categories of indicators can be
valuable in supporting sustainable tourism,
the early warning indicators are frequently
most useful to tourism managers and may
provide the ability to anticipate serious
negative effects on the destination, or on the
overall tourist experience.

22.  Ideally, indicators can enable actions to be taken
well before serious threats to sustainability occur.
 It should also be noted that the same indicator
can frequently serve different purposes and its
use can change over time.
 (E.g. an indicator of stresses on the system will
serve later on to measure the effects and results of
management efforts taken in response to the
problems identified, becoming in effect, a
performance measure for the response).

23.  There are a number of criteria to assess the
performance of tourist destinations on the table
of competitiveness; however, this study will
explore only four of these.
 These are the volume of tourist arrivals, the
volume of repeat tourists, the volume of tourism
receipts and the share of tourism receipts in
Gross National Product (GNP) which are
explained in detail below.

24.  As a traditional approach, the number of foreign
arrivals has been used to rank all destinations
(or countries) on the list.
 The higher the number of annual tourist
arrivals, the stronger the destination in
competitiveness.
 The performance of a particular destination or
region is also examined by evaluating the
percentage changes over the total number
comparing to the preceding years.

25.  The basic idea of this approach is that the
higher the number of repeat tourists to the
same destination and the higher the frequency,
the more it is attractive and competitive in the
market.
 However, the high level of repeat visits is not
a panacea since it will not necessarily offer the
destination a competitive advantage over
similar destinations.

26.  The quality of tourists could be more important
than their quantity to the success of any
destination.
 For example, considering the expenditure level of
each tourist could be more rational than the
number of tourists in determining how tourism
can provide benefits to the destination.
 Thus, the notion that the greater the number of
tourists, the greater the net income generated to
the local economy sometimes cannot be
supported.

27.  Any development in a particular tourism industry is
recorded as a direct contribution to GNP.
 The comparison analysis on the basis of the
proportion of tourism incomes within GNP
between more than two destinations will display
which destination is yielding more benefits from
international tourism.
 However, a destination with a high proportion of
GNP raised from tourism is at risk from becoming
over-dependent on the tourism industry